Titanfall 2 - New single player details and gameplay footage

By Zombie Dredd at Friday, August 12, 2016 10:56:00 AM

Titanfall 2 arrives in October this year, and unlike the first game, it will feature a singleplayer campaign. If you’re worried that it might feel a little ‘added on’, some accounts are suggesting the singleplayer component of the game is more complete and rounded than most other recent first-person shooter releases.

While I have not had first hand access to the game (yeah, boo! and hiss!), the details released via developers Respawn Entertainment indicate that the team is really conscious of not tacking a singleplayer element on.

In a recent blog post, the developer’s outlined ‘five things about Titanfall 2 single player’ while a few international outlets have had access to some of the campaign.

The Five Things

The game features a ‘different style of pacing’. What this means in the write-up is a campaign that is “a carefully crafted, cinematic shooter experience, but with a different style of pacing than you might expect.” What is appears to mean when watching the Eurogamer preview, is that the game allows for the expected fighting mixed in with quieter moments and platforming.

The campaign is designed to be a “standalone narrative experience” and is not a “training module for multiplayer.” Of course, if you’ve played the first game, you will realise that any place to practice your Pilot and Titan skills (such as wall running, double-jumping and more) will translate directly to the multiplayer mode too. I think that what they’re saying is that progress doesn’t carry over between the modes.

With Titanfall 2, you will have a ‘new world to discover’. While the Militia and the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation (IMC) are still battling each other across the Frontier, the singleplayer is set on a planet called Typhon. While Respawn calls it a “hostile and strange, yet beautiful world” it seems that what this will set up is battles with the creatures indigenous to the planet – something that the opening of the campaign and video suggests from the offset.

In Titanfall there was always an obvious bond between the Pilot and their Titan. With the sequel, this will be covered more extensively in the campaign where protagonist Jack Cooper and Titan BT(-7274) will play their parts in the “buddy story”. This will include some conversation choices which – while limited and have no impact on the game’s outcome – will be “a fun way to banter with BT by choosing the tone that best reflects your own personality.” As with every good story (or let’s just say, every story), Jack is not a pilot as yet, and the two are brought together by circumstances, so expect a fair amount of earning trust, building a bond and becoming the ultimate killing machine over the course of the campaign. Or death. Well, you never know right?

According to the blog post by the game’s director Steve Fukuda, with Titanfall 2 they want you to ‘fight as you will’. This means the ability to use a “surgical shooter approach” or a more “free-flowing chaotic style” which sees all the pilot abilities chained together for an altogether more devastating effect. Watching the gameplay, the new sliding into takedown mechanism looks spectacular (as do the takedowns in general) and I am sure that while Respawn suggests you can play your own way, they secretly want you to wall run into a sliding takedown as you dash for your Titan. Look, it’s not going to stealthy that’s for sure…

If you want to see a fair amount of the ideas in action, watching this video (preferably in 4K if your internet can handle it) shows it all off and sets the tone for what can be expected when the Titans fall on 28 October 2016 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

With the last three months of 2016 filled with the release of three of the biggest first-person shooters in recent times, will Titanfall 2 be the game you choose? Let us know in the comments below.